County Record: Digital Edition

Penny Record: Digital Edition

Conwell: You can lead a horse to water, but–

Iraq is falling back into its authoritarianism and police state despite our government’s insistence the Middle East country is a fledgling democracy!

This not-so-shocking news was released by the Human Rights Watch out of New York to Brietbard News Alert.

Now my question is, does that surprise anyone?

Folks a lot smarter than me have stated that the democracy we enjoy in the US will never exist in the Middle East. Never, as in never, never, never.

Why?

Simple. Muslim intolerance.

I voted for Bush, twice. (no, not the same election-four years apart). I, along with millions of others, believed our leaders when they claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Okay, so I’m an old codger, but not yet demented enough that I can’t clearly remember hearing of no such discovery even after one of our foot soldiers found Saddam hiding in a hole like a snake.

The tragedy of that “war” is the almost 4500 US military were killed and over 33,000 wounded. They are all heroes as are their families that must find a way to live without loved ones.

Then we headed into Afghanistan after the Taliban.

Get rid of al-Queada and the Taliban, and everything will be peachy keen. That’s the mantra Washington is waving over its head.

Nobody in his right mind believes that.

Look at the past. We strike, they hide, then vanish like puffs of smoke only to reappear in another place under another leader.

So, when we hear that Irag is tumbling back to a police state, we shouldn’t be surprised.

After we pulled out of the country with much fanfare, what happened? Iraq’s new regime clamped down on freedom of expression and assembly by beating and intimidating demonstrations and the media.

A political crisis that broke between the Shites and Sunnis.

We could spend another ten years in there, and when we left, the same thing would happen.

Now, among the Republican candidates is Ron Paul. I’ll be honest, I can’t vote for him although I like a lot of his ideas, among which is for the US to stop sending American lives and billions of money to countries that do not want us there and will never change.

From time to time you hear of isolated instances of a Muslim individual switching to Christianity, but you hear much more of the Muslim persecution of Christian communities in Arab states. In fact, as more and more Arab countries elect Islamic parties, the persecution of Christian communities will increase.

A youngster brought up in a disciplined religion usually stays with those precepts throughout his life.

I see very few Catholics becoming Methodists; Church of Christ becoming Southern Baptist; Lutheran becoming Nazarenes. So why should we expect Muslims not to be Muslims.

Sure, I disagree strongly with their beliefs; those precepts are not mine. Never could be. The God I learned about is a loving and forgiving God who wants us to love others despite their faults. I deplore Islam’s abusive treatment of women; their savage and cruel laws; their drive to eradicate all who do not believe as they. But I can’t change them.

We can go in there and conquer, but unless we maintain a strong presence forever, things will slowly shift back to their religious beliefs.

So, let the Islamists run their own countries. The lives of our young are a heck of a lot more valuable than a futile effort to establish a democracy in a country that doesn’t want it and will not fight for it.

In case you’ve not thought of it, that’s the reason we have a democracy. Our forefathers wanted it badly enough to fight and die for it.

We can police the world, but only for our own protection, not to tell others how to live.

Let’s cut out a lot of bribes or as they are euphemistically known, foreign aid, we send to various countries, many of whom would slit our throats without hesitation. Let’s give our military the capability to protect our shores; monitor what is going on around the globe, and make sure every country realizes the catastrophic consequences they’ll suffer if they mess with us.

And prove it if we must.

Of course, we have our allies, and them we must support.

What we need in Washington are leaders who are not as concerned about themselves as they are the country. Make us energy independent, not with those whoopidy-doo green schemes, but by taking advantage of growing technology to extract energy we already have.

Just this last week, one of the largest natural gas suppliers in the country announced it would cut back on production this year because there is a glut of natural gas.

Right there is energy waiting to be used, and our government is simply funnelling billions down the maelstrom known as “green jobs.”

We do need a change, folks, but not the kind that guy up there talked about. His changes will send us to four more years of the same quagmire we’re struggling in right now.